Adieu Remembered England

It was painful to witness the deterioration of England. This was magnified by the eradication of my old London haunts. Surroundings succumbed to a decline probably in evidence since the nineteenth century, which accelerated throughout the twentieth century; not helped by two devastating wars. 

My father was also deteriorating, having a heart condition for which medication had been prescribed. Yet he was fiercely independent and would not allow any interference. Knowing it would be fatal to stop taking his prescribed tablets, he nevertheless did stop taking them ― no longer able to live in a world without his first, last and only love whom in life he was unable to show the appreciation she perhaps deserved. Yet who are we to judge? Words that were her last eight years earlier nevertheless linger in the mind to burn away the veneer of romantic illusion that can grow like moss on memory.

In the weeks following my father’s death something happened that would provide a unique portal through which I almost glimpsed things as they had been in my youth. Following the discovery of my father’s body in the house where my parents had spent so much of their lives ― a house, moreover, now more resembling Mrs Havisham’s in Charles Dickens’ Great Expections ― an altered state of consciousness occurred which, coupled with the inevitable adrenaline surge that accompanies stress in crisis, found me walking the streets aimlessly, and calling on people I had not seen for decades.

  

Byron’s forbidden love with Augusta Leigh exacted from her a curl of chestnut  hair with glints of gold, and the following lines tied with white silk:

                                                Partager tous vos sentimens
                                                Ne voir que par vos yeux
                                                N’agir que par vos conseils, ne
                                                Vivre que pour vous, voilà mes
                                                voeux, mes projets, & le seul
                                                destin qui peut me rendre
                                                heureuse.

On the outside of the small folded packet Byron penned these words, followed by a cross:

"La Chevelure of the one whom I most loved +"

The equidistant cross now became their emblem. Curiously and coincidentally, I sign my own name with an equidistant cross preceding it; though for reasons entirely other than the mathematical symbol for the joining of two parts to signify sexual consummation. Byron made a note in his journal to have a seal made for him and Augusta with their “device.” This happened at the end of November 1813.

*               *               *

It once was but is no more,
You said of our beloved city

That day we spoke from afar.
I said: 'Tis a pity! 'Tis a pity!

And true; so very true.
I shall never return.

So alien and blue,
And now I learn

It resonates with neither
Me nor you.

Why did time efface and wither
London of the few

Who made it swing-a-long
To an upbeat song

As cameras clicked
And hearts ticked

So merrily; so merrily?
Fare thee well, Chelsea!

Adieu, Holloway, Highgate
Hill and Hampstead Heath!

Goodbye London Town!
Then we put the 'phone down,

And never again
Spoke about its end.

"I like London," she said

On that day we met

All those years later.

'Twas my birthday

And I thought there

Was a time when I

Loved London too,

Much more than you

Or anyone I knew

Could construe.

But that London

Is long gone — 

That London is now 

A ghost of yesterday.

"I like London," she said.

My response was swift,

And fixed in its view — 

"London, my dear friend, 

Is dead."